Video: DaVinci Surface Physics Illustrator Interface on Xbox Kinect, with gesture interaction, by Razorfish

DaVinci prototype on Xbox Kinect from Razorfish - Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.

RELATED
Razorfish ports DaVinci interface to Kinect, makes physics cool (video)
Time Stevens, Engaget, 12/5/10
Razorfish
(I love this website.)

Top 10 Interactive Multimedia Technology Blogposts, November, 2010

Here are the "top ten" posts for this blog, according to the number of visitors during the month of November, 2010:

Hacked Kinect Multitouch using libFreenect and libTISCH (via Florian Echtler)
11/13/2010


Power to the Pixel Cross-Media Forum Streaming Live from London Today!
10/12/2010


Revised Post 8/1/06: Interactive multimedia for social skills, understanding feelings, relaxtion, coping strategies, etc.
7/12/06


Interactive Touch Screen Technology, Participatory Design, and "Getting It": REVISED
11/11/2010


Microsoft Surface Light and Physics App for Kids at the Smithsonian
11/24/2010


Interactive iPad Apps for Kids with Autism: Could some of these be transformed for multi-touch tabletop activities?
11/06/10


New Version of Surface from Microsoft?
11/10/10


Tech Product Placement & Embedded Advertising: Cisco Telepresence, Surface, Kinect, Windows 7 Phone, Apple, Apple iAd - Videos, Links - plus legal & ethical concerns
11/29/10


Digital Newspaper from News Corp, for the iPad (via physog, Guardian)
10/18/10


Online Physics Games for Interactive Whiteboards and Touch Screens (including mobile devices)
10/18/10

There is a need for multi-touch/gesture designers/developers!

If you are a talented interactive web designer/developer, game designer/developer, traditional programmer with a creative bent, or someone who who is thinking about working with technology in the future as a programmer or designer,  I urge you to consider thinking about designing/developing multi-touch applications in the near future.

In my opinion, there will be a need for multi-touch web applications as well as for multi-touch education and collaboration applications for the SMART Table, Microsoft's Surface,  multi-touch tablets like the rumored iTablet from Apple, and the multi-touch laptops and all-in-ones (Dell, HP, etc.).

Below are direct links to some of my blog posts related to multi-touch applications and screens. If you are fairly new to multi-touch, I'm sure that looking through some of my blog posts will be helpful.  All of the posts have links to resources, and most have photos and video clips of multi-touch in action.

If you are new to this blog, I have a great deal of information, links, photos, and video clips of various multi-touch screens and applications. The best way to find the stuff is to enter in a keyword in the search box for this blog:  multitouch, touch screen, gesture, multi-touch, etc. on  this blog.

Also do a search on my other blog: The World Is My Interface http://tshwi.blogspot.com

Here are some links:
Do you have an HP TouchSmart, Dell Studio One or NextWindow touch-screen? NUITech's Snowflake Suite upgrade provides a multi-touch plug-in
http://bit.ly/5tdlhc

The following blog post has a video clip that shows someone from Adobe painting with a multi-touch application in development:
More Multi-Touch!: Rumor of the mobile apple iTablet; AdobeXD & Multitouch; 10-finger Mobile Multitouch: http://bit.ly/4S9Upm

Ideum's GestureWorks: http://bit.ly/4C1p7M

Interactive Walls, Interactive Projection Systems, GestureTek's Motion-Based Games: http://bit.ly/6GRGtW

Intuilab's Interfaces: Multi-touch applications/solutions for presentations, collaboration, GIS, and commerce: http://bit.ly/7RK7qN

For software developers:
How to do Multitouch with WPF 4 in Visual Studio 2010: http://bit.ly/7c4YqC

Josh Blake's' Nice Multi-touch and Natural User Interface Applications for Surface (Cross-Post )

Information from Josh's YouTube channel:
"This is a video of some of the cool multi-touch and Natural User Interface (NUI) applications I designed and developed for Surface and Windows 7." The InfoStrat.VE map control for WPF and Surface is available for free at http://virtualearthwpf.codeplex.com.
I especially like the moving ring-menu concept, as it facilitates smoother collaboration between people on an interactive table or surface, where flexible orientation control is important.

At 3:15, the demonstration of Josh's ink-shape recognition begins. This is a feature that would be great to incorporate in my applications for children with disabilities who have some fine-motor limitations.

Josh's Blog:  Deconstructing the NUI
Josh's Recent Post about post-WIMP concepts:
Metaphors and OCGM
Josh works at InfoStrat

Sensacell Modular Interactive Surface Technology: Interactive Art in NYC

Interactive surfaces continue to crop up in public spaces.  Today I came across information about Sensacell, an interface system consisting of "smart" modules that can be put together to form a communication network. The system integrates non-contact sensors that can detect people and objects up to six feet away, and this sensing can occur even through glass, plastics, wood, and so forth.  The sensors are capable of tracking environmental changes.


The Sensacell Corporation is led by Leo Fernekes and is often used to support interactive art  and related displays in public spaces. The most recent installation is located in Manhattan and can be accessed by peop on the street.


Robert Stratton Interactive Art

According to the information on the YouTube video, the Sensacell Interactive LED Wall was created with Max/MSP/Jitter.


"The artwork by Robert Stratton entitled semiboneless transforms the storefront window into an electronic interactive canvas that senses hand movements through the window glass, allowing the viewer to interact and influence the behavior of the piece- art that begs to be touched." (YouTube description)


"The work is located at 141 East 33rd Street, on the north-east corner of Lexington Ave. and 33rd St. in Manhattan, New York. The exhibition will run from 12/14/2009 though 1/12/2010 and is viewable 24 hours day. The artwork is installed in a large storefront window of a street level retail space." (PR Web 12/17/09)


Sensacell: Below is a video of an 8 x 8 LED Wall Sensacell Module



RELATED
Working with Sensacell: Modular Interactive Proximity Sensor and Lighting System (pdf)
Sensacell Corporation Presents an Interactive Storefront Art Installation by Artist Robert Stratton  (PRWeb, 12/17/09)
Robert Stratton Interactive Art
Chashama (An arts group - provided space for the interactive art installation.)
"chashama supports thriving cultural communities by transforming temporarily vacant properties into spaces where art can flourish. By recycling and repurposing buildings in transition, we invest in neighborhoods, foster local artists, and sustain a vast range of creativity and culture."


Sensacell has been around for a while
2005 post:   Sensacell  (Interactive Architecture blog)


Sensacell Interactive Floor


Cross posted on The World Is My Interface

Participatory Design Conference 2010 "Participation :: The Challenge" + some thoughts

I really want to go to Australia next year and attend this conference! Below are links to the conference, along with an excerpt from the conference description:

11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference:  Participation :: The Challenge (pdf)
PDC2010 Conference Website
PDC2008 Conference Website

"Participation is the complex, contested, changing, creative and celebratory core of participatory design. We invite you to explore what participation can and needs to mean in the design contexts where we are working now and those we are likely to encounter soon. While current ‘best practice’ in many areas of interactive technology design now at least pays lip service to people’s participation, how is this participation being negotiated and defined, and by whom? And if Participatory Design methods developed some 20 years ago are claimed to have become standard design practice, how do we go about developing the methods that will define standard design practice 20 years from now?"


REFLECTION
Judging from what I've experienced as a consumer/user,  there are many things that are floating around in the form of electronics, software, and related gadgets that are examples of the absence of participatory design.

My daily pet peeve is the remote control for my entertainment set-up, which includes DVR and a small but growing number of interactive TV channels.  Another pet peeve is the usability of productivity software, including the software I must use for work.

At any rate, below are links to some of my thoughts related to usability topics that might be of interest to people who are thinking about or practicing participatory design or user-centered design.

2007 Letter to the Editor, Pervasive Computing
Useful Usability Studies (pdf)

2007 Blog Post
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame (In a Hospital)

2008 Blog Posts
Interactive Touch-Screen Technology, Participatory Design, and "Getting It"
An Example of Convergence: Interactive TV: uxTV 2008

2009 Blog Posts
Microsoft: Are You Listening?  Cool Cat Teacher (Vicki Davis) Tries out Microsoft's Multi-touch Surface Table
Haptic/Tactile Interface:  Dynamically Changeable Physical Buttons
The Convergence of TV, the Internet, and Interactivity:  Update
UX of ITV:  The User Experience and Interactive TV (or Let's Stamp Out Bad Remote Controls)
ElderGadget Blog: Useful Tech and Tools

Morning Tech News: Razorfone: Windows 7 & WPF Retail Demo on a Multi-touch Screen, via I Started Something

Razorfone Interactive Retail Experience from Razorfish - Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.

This demo was created by the Emerging Experiences team at Razorfish. Here's the video description from Vimeo:

"Customers are being faced with increasingly complex buying decisions, especially when it comes to technology and services. As a result, increased pressure is being placed on store associates to provide knowledgeable service to customers. Our Emerging Experiences team used this opportunity to develop a solution to demonstrate how an immersive interactive experience can assist customers and store associates with complex buying decisions in a retail setting."


Comment:   We've graduated from 2D multi-touch manipulation of photos via pan-zoom-rotate-resize-drag to 3D multi-touch manipulation of "objects".

So?  I'm expecting much more.

There is much room for creative growth in this area! 

RELATED
Emerging Experiences Blog
I Started Something Blog

Want to make some multi-touch? Try PyMT- Python Multitouch. Featured in Make. (via Sharath Patali)

Sharath Patali, a member of the NUI-Group, has been working with Python Multitouch, otherwise known as PyMT, to create multi-touch applications.  He shared a link to a recent post in Make, featuring PyMT.  Sharath is the author of the UI Addict blog, and is currently doing his internship at NUITEQ (Natural User Interface Technologies).

I've been told that the beauty of PyMT is that it makes it "easy" to create multi-touch prototype applications using very few lines of code, which is great for trying out different ideas in a short period of time.  It helps if you already know Python!


PyMT - A post-WIMP Multi-Touch UI Toolkit from Thomas Hansen on Vimeo.

"PyMT is a python module for developing multi-touch enabled media rich applications. Currently the aim is to allow for quick and easy interaction design and rapid prototype development. PyMT is written in Python, based on pyglet toolkit."


PyMT Programming Guide


PyMT Website

Note: 
Christopher, author of The Space Station blog, is a member of the NUI-Group, and is building his own multi-touch table running his PyMT-based applications. Christopher is a student in Koblenz, Germany, studying computational visualistics, known as information visualization in the US.

BEN: Breakable Experimental Network Simulation on a Multi-touch Wall (RENCI)

BEN, or Breakable Experiemental Network, is a mix of network visualization and multi-touch technology on a very large screen. The project aims to provide better network monitoring and management tools in a user-friendly, intuitive and efficient manner. It is also looks like great tool for learning about network engineering.

Hands-on networking!

BEN is part of the GENI project.

The music in the video is by Crystal Castles and Black Moth Super Rainbow.

Cross-posted: The World Is My Interface

Interactive Memorabilia at the Hard Rock Cafe: Microsoft's Multi-touch Rock Wall, Companion Surface Installations, and Awesome Touch-Responsive Interactive Memorabilia Website.

UPDATE: Video of Hard Rock Cafe's Memorabilia Multi-touch Wall



I came across the updated Hard Rock Cafe website and found that it provides an awesome interactive experience!  Visitors can explore the extensive Memorabilia collection in detail. This site is almost ready for inclusion in my UX/Interactive Hall of Fame!

According an article posted on the Hospitality Technology website, ""Tech, Love, and Rock 'n' Roll,  the website was built using Silverlight, and is part of an initiative to expand the reach of the Hard Rock Cafe's extensive memorabilia collection.

"It all started last year with what we call 'Memo 2.0,'" [for memorabilia 2.0] and the rollout of Microsoft's new Silverlight (www.silverlight.net) technology, explains Joe Tenczar, senior director of technology and CIO for Hard Rock International. Silverlight is a web application framework, similar in scope to Adobe flash, that lets companies build custom apps. Hard Rock partnered with its brand agency Duncan/Channon (www.duncanchannon.com) and software developer Vertigo (www.vertigo.com) to create a custom Silverlight application for www.hardrock.com."


Below is a video of the website when it was still under development, unveiled during a MIX08 keynote:


The website is a companion project that is part of a bigger vision that includes an 18-foot interactive multi-touch wall that mirrors the Memorabilia website.  The article goes on to mention that the "Rock Wall can be used by one person to blow up a piece of memorabilia as large as the screen, or optimized for six different user experiences at one time, though the technology has been tested for responsiveness to hundreds of simultaneous touches. "Imagine seeing Bob Dylan's Harley at more than life size; big impact," says Tenczar....Rock Wall uses a single piece of Stewart projection glass, custom-made at the factory for Hard Rock, along with three Christie projectors, numerous lasers, and multiple IR cameras to create a unified projection and touch experience. "The graphics are driven by a Nvidia Quadro Plex and there are two other dedicated servers for localized content and physics. I have seen a lot of cool technology, but this still makes my jaw drop whenever I see it in person." And the technology is smart. "If I walk up to the screen, it will blow up where I am."
 
According to information from the Hard Rock Cafe's press release, the interactive wall was created by Obscura Digital, a company located in San Francisco, along with Technomedia Systems was also involved in this project.  Here's a quote from the press release:

"We were excited to work with Hard Rock on this revolutionary project," said Obscura Digital CEO Patrick Connolly. "This is the longest, largest and most technologically sophisticated multi-touch wall we’ve built. It utilizes our newest Fireframe technology, and the result is the highest resolution, seamless multi-touch display we have ever seen. We are delivering a 6000 x 1000 pixel display, so that multiple users at a time can enjoy the vast Hard Rock Memorabilia collection in stunningly high resolution. With this display, customers can literally zoom so deep into the images, that things like a scratch on Buddy Holly's glasses can be seen 3 feet wide. The graphic quality of this system is something the public has never seen, and the impact on the customers is something they will not soon forget." 
Hard Rock Cafe Multi-Touch
In addition to the website and Rock Wall, booths at the Hard Rock Cafe provide customers with access to music videos from a video distribution server, or VDS, created by Coleman Technologies.  Each booth's touch screen display terminal has its own computer, and this allows guest control over the music videos that are played at the cafe.  Content from the memorabilia system can be explored by customers right from the booth, from what I understand.

Microsoft's Surface tables were installed in the cafe, running a custom application created by Vertigo. that allows customers to interact with a spinning globe to locate and explore other Hard Rock Cafe's around the world.





Memorabilia Website UX:

Unfortunately, I am not in Las Vegas, so I haven't had a chance to interact with the Hard Rock Cafe's Rock Wall or any of the Microsoft Surface installations, which are the centerpiece of this project.

Not to worry. The companion Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia website, experienced from the comfort of my home on an HP TouchSmart PC, provides a great user experience, even thought it is not fully optimized for touch navigation.

One of the things that I like about the site is that it uses Microsoft's Deep Zoom feature. When you zoom in, you can explore each photo without sacrificing resolution, and explore everything in minute detail.

If you want to try your hand at touch navigation, you will be pleasantly surprised, even though you will have to rely on your mouse at times. To zoom in, tap the initial presentation screen, and use your fingertips to pan around. What you touch and release won't go flying about the screen, which is a good thing.

If you lightly tap an item of interest, you will get a translucent information box on the right side of the screen. The information box might include video clip of an interview with a musician, a story, and a means to share the experience through embedding a widget on your website or blog, posting a link, or emailing a link.

After poking around the site using Firefox, I switched to Internet Explorer, turned the zoom setting to 125%, and had no difficulty using my right index finger to navigate through the information box. (It was more difficult to do this using Firefox.)

The directions for traditional navigation are simple:

"Turn on, zoom in, zoom out. Use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out. You can also zoom in by clicking and zoom out by shift-clicking. To pan, click and drag."

Featured artists on the Memorabilia site include The Who, The Beatles, James Brown, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Guns N'Roses, Buddy Holly, Madonna, Motley Crue, Elvis Presley, Queen, and The Rolling Stones. You can sort the main presentation page by artist or year, and explore the collection by artist, type of item, genre of music, decade, and location.

This website provides an interactive, user-friendly means of exploring the history of rock music. (It would be cool if the site offered some form of interactive sound track.)

I'm impressed.

I embedded the widgets below from the Memorabilia site. I wasn't sure exactly what might turn up. The interactive widgets, created with Silverlight, went beyond my expectations.  You can explore the content right from this post, if you have Silverlight installed:





I shot some HD video of my touch interaction of the website and will post the videos as soon as I can. For now, take a look at some of the screen shots:

Main portal:



















Eric Clapton's Guitar and Backstory:

Screen shot of memorabilia sorted by type - instruments:

Zooming in:



















Screenshot of Gibby Hayne's art:




















Detail of one of Madonna's decorative costumes:

Multi-touch App for Pediatric Neuropsych Assessment and Rehab

Microsoft Surface Multi-touch Application for Pediatric Neuropsychological Assessment and Rehab, by Vectorform

Above is a link to my TechPsych post about the Cook Children's Health Care System's use of multi-touch technology for children and teens who have suffered traumatic brain injuries or have other significant neurological disorders.

MT-50 Multi-touch Table: Ideum + NUITech = Interactive Delight

Here are a couple of kids on Ideum's MT-50 multi-touch, multi-user table. You can see the delight!

The picture was taken from the videoclip below:



According to information from the video, the MT-50 screen provides a higher resolution than Microsoft's Surface. It comes with bundled with GestureWorks, a software development kit that works with Adobe's CS4, and NUITech's multi-software product, Snowflake Suite.

The MT 50 is designed for use in interactive museum exhibits, but in my opinion, holds great potential for use in public libraries and K-12 media centers (libraries), and even in classroom settings.

RELATED

Ideum's Press Release (pdf)
Ideum's MT-50 Table Specs (pdf)
Multi-touch Snowflake Suite trial, downloadable from the NUITech website

MICROSOFT: ARE YOU LISTENING? Cool Cat Teacher (Vicki Davis) Tests Out Microsoft's Multi-touch Surface Table

When Microsoft unveiled the Surface in 2007, I was disappointed that there were no immediate plans to market it for use in education. At the time, there were no immediate plans to release the Surface for research and development by university students. I had just completed a course in human-computer interaction, and with my background as a school psychologist, I KNEW this sort of technology would work well in education.

My head was brimming with ideas for this innovative technology for use with the students I work with every day.

The following video shows a demonstration of Microsoft's multi-touch, multi-user Surface table at the 2009 NECC conference, and also provides insightful comments from Vicki Davis, author of the very popular Cool Cat Teacher blog. Vicki discusses the value of surface/tabletop computing in education and shares her views about the need for user involvement in the educational software development process. She also gives great advice about how Microsoft or other developers of tabletop computing systems should proceed.

I agree with Vicky's comments, 100%, as my regular blog readers know!

MICROSOFT, ARE YOU LISTENING?



In the above video, it is apparent that the musical instrument applications do not provide a good touch response on the Surface. Vicki suggests that touch responsiveness is key, and that all Surface applications should be held to the high standard of Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. Vicky goes on to say that Microsoft should support easy development of applications, and ensure that applications are very user-friendly and easy for school folks to install. If you work in a K-12 setting, you know what I am talking about ; )

Vicky is preaching to the choir when she stresses that Microsoft R&D (and others) should involve users in ongoing development, in a meaningful way, by using REAL people, REAL teachers, people who work with students. If you have ever battled with a "lame" educational application, you know why this is so very important!

Vicky's enthusiasm for the use of tabletop/surface computing in education can not be ignored. She absolutely knows what she is talking about, and she is the instructional technology voice for a multitude of educators around the world.

Here is Vicky's plea:

"I wish Microsoft would listen to these 3 things from a teacher in a classroom (me). I know Microsoft has bigger things to do than watch this video, but, I can dream, can't I?"

(I've paraphrased the following quotes.)

1. Understand the amazing potential for Surface devices in education. Look at three to five years out. You are looking at the future.

(This technology can engage students who have ADHD, etc.)

2. Harness the power of your users! Pull in your users. There are so many people in education would give their thoughts for free!

3. Create virtual and online ways for Microsoft to interact with teachers.


"If Microsoft decides to invest in this, and I do hope that somebody watching this video will understand the importance of integrating the world around us into the learning experiences and the learning environment, as part as how we remake and re-do education."

My sentiments exactly!

A few thoughts:

So where are we now?

Smart Technologies has come out with the SMARTTable, but it was designed for younger students. At this point, there are very few options, especially affordable options, for educators of students in the upper grades to use this technology.

Some members of the NUI-group are involved in creating educational applications for table-top systems, but they are few in number.

A few companies are using this technology for education, but the applications are mostly limited to interactive museum exhibitions.

From my research on this topic, there are very few developers that have the interest or the inclination to create educational applications for table-top computing.

My hope is that this will change soon! Join me in this conversation.

Surface Flight Tracker Video from fboweb labs / flightwise.com, with background music by Art of Noise for your NUI pleasure.

This flight-tracker application for the Surface, looks fun to use. As I watched the video, I realized that it wasn't the application itself that I liked. It was the music that accompanied the video. The choice of music was from the 80's synth-pop band, Art of Noise

Since I'm a music lover, the music got me thinking.

Wouldn't it be great if productivity/work-related applications like Flight Tracker could be developed to provide a means for incorporating a sound-track?

Several thoughts and ideas flashed into my mind:

• Surface and related natural user interface/interaction (NUI) applications have the potential to transform routine, ho-hum work tasks into activities that are a bit more pleasant. Since people often listen to music while they work, it stands to reason that NUI productivity applications should incorporate a music component, at least as an option.
  

• To support a user-centered music platform for NUI applications, the application could incorporate a "smart" music library within the system, with the capability of integrating music libraries and playlists from user's mobile devices, as well as the web, effortlessly.(Of course, there are privacy/security and firewall issues to address, but that is another story.)
  

• Users could have a choice of listening to their own music playlists (including a shuffle option, selecting from a variety of presets, or go for something like the iTunes genius effect, listening to music generated from an algorithm that takes into account music preferences and user interaction with the productivity application over time.
  

• Since many Surface/NUI applications are designed to support collaborative work and interaction between two or more people, the music situation could get a bit complicated, since people have differing tastes. If co-workers disagreed about the music selection, the program would automatically default to generic elevator music, or silence.
  

• NUI applications might even pave the way for a new genre of music. This concept isn't too far-fetched. Think of all the music we've come to love over the years that was composed for movies and even video games!
  

If you know of anyone that is working on this concept, or would like to collaborate with me sometime in the future on this concept, please let me know. I'm slowly working on an interactive timeline prototype, and I have some ideas about adding a music/sound track component.

RELATED
Art of Noise - Close To The Edit (Version 1):

Interactive Touch Tables are Multiplying! Ideum's new 100" multi-touch museum display; Ubisoft's Ruse on a Surface....

Photo from the Museum Exhibit and Design News/Ideum Blog

The above table is 100", created for Nashville's Adventure Science Center's Sudekum Planetarium, is based on Ideum's mt2 table: "Built for museum environments, the high-resolution mt2 Table supports intuitive gestures, allowing visitors to interact and explore custom exhibits. With multiuser support, mt2 Table serves as digital gathering place, allowing visitors to interact with museum content and each other."

Two computers power this table. Natural User Interface's Snowflake handles the optical support and tracking, and the second computer will be running the EM spectrum application, which is developed in Adobe Flash. It is a work in progress. For more information, visit the Ideum blog.

Here is a video trailer of Ubisoft's R.U.S.E. played on a multi-touch table. Much of the trailer appears to be a simulation. I liked the part where the battleships are traveling over the water. According to a blog post, the table depicted in the trailer is the Intuiface, by Intuilab.

Photos of Ubisoft's R.U.S.E. game, running on a multi-touch table:




Photo from the Ubisoft Blog

Intuiface Information PDF
Intuilabs Website

If you visit the Intuilabs website, be sure you interact with the photos of the team! I couldn't get the pictures to change when I touched the screen of my HP TouchSmart PC, so I think they are activated by a mouse-over. It would be nice if they could touch-enable their website.)

NUI-Group's Christian Moore Interview-Podcast on the Interactive Display 2009 Conference website

As I write this post, the 2009 Interactive Displays conference is underway in San Jose, California. The home page of the conference website provides a series of interviews of many of the conference participants and presenters, including Chris Moore, a member of the NUI group. Chris discusses the importance of the open-source NUI (natural user interface) community in moving interactive display and NUI-based technology forward.

Interactive Displays 2009 Conference Website

Interview Participants:
Mats Johansson - EON Reality
Guillaume Largillier - Stantum
Christian Moore- NUI Group
Brent Bushnell- Tapcode
Steven Bathiche - Microsoft
Jerry Bertrand - Microscent
Henry Kaufman- Tactable

If you are at the conference and you have some video clips to share of a presentation, demonstration, or anything else that might be of interest, please give me the link so I can share it on my blog.

Below are some pictures from the companies represented by the people who were interviewed for the Interactive Displays 2009 conference:


Eon Reality


Tactable


Microsoft's Surface


NUI-Group


Tapcode


I don't usually put company logos on my blog, but if you are a visiting my blog searching for links to companies that are involved with interactive display technologies, this will save you some time. (I received no payment for this gesture.)

Pervasive Checkers on Microsoft's Surface: The Gamepack Video

In early 2007, before we knew of the existence of Microsoft's multi-touch surface, I worked on a "Pervasive Checkers" project with Johnny Hopkins, a classmate in my Ubiquitous Computing class. I'd previously worked with XNA Game Studio Express in an AI for Games class, and thought that it would be cool to make a casual checkers game on a multi-touch table that could be played in gathering spots such as coffee houses and neighborhood cafes.

Below is a screen shot of what we created using Inspiration software - (in the application, you can click on an item and it expands to reveal additional information.)

Two years later, and the Pervasive Checkers idea is reality - but I wasn't involved in the process. Checkers is one of the games that is included in a game-pack created specifically for the Surface.

Take a look at the video:



From Surface Computer News:

"The Microsoft Surface Games Pack is a clear illustration of where the Natural User Interface of Windows 7 has the potential to take games. Windows is traditionally the number 1 gaming platform around the world. With the introduction of the NUI, allowing players to literally have titles at their fingertips via touch, Windows 7 can kick the gaming experience up a notch. Provided that developers rise up to the challenge."

Interactive Displays 2009: Listen to a podcast interview each day leading up to the conference.

The following people were on the podcast on 4/13/09:
Steven Bathiche- Microsoft
Jerry Bertrand- Microscent, LLC
Henry Kaufman- Tactable

Interactive Displays 2009

Note: Jeff Han will be one of the presenters.

More info to come...

Dreams about haptic overlays: Part Two- SLAP: Bridging the Gap Between Virtual and Physical Controls on Tabletops

In response to my previous post about my dream about haptic touch-screen overlays,
Martin Kaltenbrunner pointed me to an interesting link SLAP: Silicone Illuminated Active Peripherals "Bridging the Gap Between Virtual and Physical Controls on Tabletops". SLAP is a project of the Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen University, headed by Dr. Jan Borchers.



FYI - Information from the Media Computing Group website:

• Grounded in Computer Science, we develop and study new interaction theories, techniques, and systems in the areas of interaction with multimedia, ubiquitous computing environments, tangible user interfaces, and HCI design patterns. Our goal is to make the Brave New World of ubiquitous multimedia technologies useful by making it usable. A recent overview of our research approach and research directions can be found here.

SLAP: The Movies




Here are some pictures and related information from the SLAP website:

• CHI 2009 Video on YouTube or as QuickTime video (21 MB).
• Presentation of our SLAP demo at TEI 2009 (YouTube)

Publications

2009

	Malte Weiss, Julie Wagner, Yvonne Jansen, Roger Jennings, Ramsin Khoshabeh, James D. Hollan, and Jan Borchers. SLAP Widgets: Bridging the Gap Between Virtual and Physical Controls on Tabletops. In CHI '09: Proceeding of the twenty-seventh annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM. .
	Malte Weiss, Julie Wagner, Roger Jennings, Yvonne Jansen, Ramsin Khoshabeh, James D. Hollan, and Jan Borchers. SLAP Widgets: Bridging the Gap Between Virtual and Physical Controls on Tabletops. In CHI '09: Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM Press. .
	Malte Weiss, Julie Wagner, Roger Jennings, Yvonne Jansen, Ramsin Khoshabeh, James D. Hollan, and Jan Borchers. SLAPbook: Tangible Widgets on Multi-touch Tables in Groupware Environments. In TEI '09: Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM. .

2008

Malte Weiss, Roger Jennings, Julie Wagner, James D. Hollan, Ramsin Khoshabeh, and Jan Borchers. SLAP: Silicone Illuminated Active Peripherals. In Extended Abstracts of Tabletop '08, 2008. .

MORE FYI:

(Dr. Jan Borchers, the head of the Media Computing Group, recommends the following list of books, and I agree with his list, 100%.)

Dr. Jan Borchers' (Annotated) Top Ten List of Books on Human-Computer Interaction:

Note: I have read many of these books and I agree that they should be required reading anyone who plans to design, develop, program, or implement anything related to technology and people.

1. Alan Dix, Janet Finlay, Gregory D. Abowd, and Russell Beale: Human-Computer Interaction, 3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 2004. Currently the best, most well-rounded book I know to teach introductory HCI if you need to limit yourself to a single title. Technical enough, good breadth, not too fuzzy for a CS curriculum, very current, with a web site that includes resources such as sample programs, slides, etc.
   
   
2. Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant: Designing The User Interface, 4th ed., Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2004. Best overall reference book for all areas of HCI, providing an introduction and great up-to-date pointers to most sub-fields of HCI research and practice, especially different interaction techniques. His Golden Rules of User Interface Design and sample questionnaires for user testing are very useful in an introductory class. Unfortunately, the companion web site costs money after an initial trial period.
   
   
3. Donald A. Norman, The Design Of Everyday Things, Basic Books, 2002. A classic text from 1988 with an updated introduction that, while some of the technologies described or envisioned seem somewhat outdated now, still provides the best introduction to the spirit of good human-centered design. A not too technical read with hilarious stories of badly designed everyday technology, it provides some very useful basic models for human cognition, such as the Seven Stages of Action. This book also introduced the fundamental concept of affordances to HCI. Changed my view of the world of technology around me, and is probably the best initial brainwash for engineering students to "get" user-centered design.
   
   
4. Jenny Preece, Yvonne Rogers, and Helen Sharp: Interaction Design, 2nd ed., Wiley, 2007. This title focuses more on the process of designing good user interfaces, and is less technical, but excellent and up-to-date in the area it addresses. The companion web site has slides, case studies, and other materials.
   
   
5. Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions, MIT Press, 2008. A truly beautiful "coffee-table style" book on interaction design, also covering product and industrial design of digital technology (Moggridge is a founder of IDEO). It has wonderful short essays about seminal digial product designs, from Engelbart's mouse, to the Mac and Palm, to Google and other internet services, as well as articles on digital product design theory. My own Sweet Sports and Baroque Technology article was based on one of the theory articles. Special treat: video interviews and chapters are available for free, on a weekly rotation, at http://www.designinginteractions.com/.
   
   
6. Bill Buxton, Sketching User Experiences, Elsevier, 2007. Similar to Moggridge's book in style, this book focuses on the early stages of product design. It also includes very interesting stories of key interactive products, such as Apple's iPod. And of course it's written by one of the long-time key players in HCI. More at http://www.billbuxton.com/.
   
   
7. Terry Winograd (ed.): Bringing Design to Software, Addison-Wesley, 1996. An excellent and very well edited collection of contributions from key players in HCI, from Kapor's Software Design Manifesto to Rheinfrank's Design Languages. Its particular value also comes from the profiles that link chapters and give an insider's view of how some of the most seminal UI designs came to be, from the Xerox Star to VisiCalc and HyperCard. Terry has some information about his book at http://hci.stanford.edu/bds/, and I used it with great success when I had the fortunate opportunity to teach an introductory HCI class in his program at Stanford in 2002.
   
   
8. Brenda Laurel (ed.): The Art of Human-Computer Interaction, Addison-Wesley, 1990. While ancient by today's standards, this book is another carefully compiled and very coherent collection of highly relevant articles on HCI by some of the most influential people in the field. I particularly like the article by Scott Kim on interdisciplinary design, and Tom Erickson's chapter.
   
   
9. Apple Computer: The Apple Software Design Guidelines, latest edition 2005. OK, I'm a Mac head, but then many HCI people are because Apple has such an excellent sense of doing the right thing when it comes to user interface design. These guidelines have been around since the 90's, with several new editions since then, and especially Part I ("Application Design Fundamentals") contains excellent, system-independent, hands-on advice for anybody developing interactive software, especially desktop applications. And it's free! Apple's developer website has the latest version both online and as downloadable PDF. I often recommend this as a quick read for engineering types that just want the bare essentials to help avoid major UI design catastrophes.
   
   
10. Jef Raskin, The Humane Interface, Addison-Wesley, 2000. Similar to Norman's book above, but more recent and more technical, this is another good first read to start thinking about user interface design, written by the father of the original Apple Macintosh. Some of the ideas presented here are quite unusual, and that's intended. Some related materials, such as demos of his Zoomable User Interface and The Humane Environment are at http://www.jefraskin.com/.
    
    

"So that's my top 10 list. I may add some more in the future. But I figure it's more important to restrict myself to those books I think are really outstanding than bother you with additional titles that don't really have that special something....For a good current PhD-level HCI reading list that is based more on papers and individual chapters than single books, see Terry Winograd's HCI reading list at Stanford University." -Dr. Jan Borchers